4-Star Theatre. Police Story: Lockdown: In this second start-from-scratch reboot of the Hong Kong Police Story series, recently widowed police captain Zhong Wen (Jackie Chan) seeks to make amends with his estranged daughter Miao (Tian Jing) in the nightclub owned by Miao's douchey boyfriend Wu (Liu Ye), but Wu has other plans: to hold Wen and the other patrons hostage in exchange for the release of a convicted murderer. Chan takes a fair amount of abuse for a man pushing 60, though he understandably doesn't engage in the same intense stunt work as he used to, and Police Story: Lockdown is more of a drama than an action film. Daily. 2200 Clement, San Francisco, 666-3488, lntsf.com/4-star-theatre.html.
Brava Theater Center. 11th Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival: The Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project presents another big — and free — weekend of short films and documentaries chronicling the lives of queer and trans people of color, split into a series of thematic programs: Love & Stardust (Friday, 7:30 p.m.), Emerging Radiance (Saturday, 7 p.m.), Homing Instinct (Sunday, 2 p.m.), and Boundless Bodies (Sunday, 6 p.m.). Saturday afternoon also features a 3 p.m. screening of Cincinnati Goddamn, a 2014 feature-length documentary about police brutality and institutionalized racism, followed by a community conversation. June 12-14. Free. qwocmap.org/festival. 2781 24th St., San Francisco, 641-7657, brava.org.
Center for Sex & Culture. No Tears for the Creatures of the Night: The Vacant Closet Collective shines a light on the queer punk underground with a showing of Kevin Hegge's documentary She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column, 8mm short films by Will Munro, and a photo slideshow by Martin Sorrondeguy (Los Crudos/Limp Wrist) and Don Pyle (Trouble in the Camera Club). Fri., June 12, 7:30 p.m. $8-$10. qcc2.org/no-tears. 1349 Mission, San Francisco, 902-2071, sexandculture.org.
Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center. Welles 100: Part One (1941-1948): The first half of the Smith Rafael Film Center's Orson Welles retrospective focuses on the singular director's early Hollywood works, including the 1946 imposturous Nazi noir The Stranger (June 7), his notoriously edited 1942 adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons (June 14), the San Francisco-set 1947 crime thriller The Lady from Shanghai (June 21), his moody Macbeth (June 28), and starting with the one and only Citizen Kane (May 31). Sun., June 14, 4:15 & 7 p.m.; Sun., June 21, 4:30 & 7 p.m.; Sun., June 28, 7 p.m. $11. 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael, 454-1222, rafaelfilm.cafilm.org.
Clay Theatre. The Room: Tommy Wiseau's cinematic bomb is every bit as bad as it's cracked up to be. You'll crack up as well at this riotous midnight screening with lots of Rocky Horror-style audience participation. Second Saturday of every month, 11:59 p.m. Testament of Youth: This new film version of Vera Brittain's memoir, which has been a seam in the fabric of British cultural history ever since its publication in 1933, is elegant and absorbing, with the quiet command that's sort of standard-issue British miniseries stuff. Less standard, and crucial, is the film's central perspective: It's a war story as told by a woman, who's a pacifist. Starting June 12. Daily. 2261 Fillmore, San Francisco, 267-4893, landmarktheatres.com.
DNA Lounge. Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay: RE/Search's V. Vale will be on hand to provide the live intro to this screening of a new documentary about the raw and transgressive early years of industrial music, including Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Test Dept., and other '70s and '80s innovators. DJ CZ (aka Chris Zaldua) spins experimental techno and subterranean electronic beats before and after the film. Wed., June 17, 8 p.m. $12-$15. industrialsoundtrack.com. 375 11th St., San Francisco, 626-1409, dnalounge.com.
Embarcadero Center Cinema. When Marnie Was There: A dreamy combination of gothic ghost story, bumpy adolescent coming-of-age, and sweet pastoral romance, this glorious new animated adaptation of Joan G. Robinson's 1967 book from Studio Ghibli director Hiromasa Yonebayashi is the story of an asthmatic self-loathing prepubescent foster child with abandonment issues. Sent away to a relative's house by the seaside, she meets Marnie, an ethereal blonde girl who apparently lives in an abandoned marsh-side mansion; a bit of mystery and some very intense bonding ensues. Daily. I'll See You in My Dreams: You might go in expecting a heart-on-sleeve handout to middle-class women of retirement age, but I'll See You in My Dreams isn't charity, and director Brett Haley doesn't seem so interested in demographic premeditation. It's light touches all around, with everybody — especially our protagonist, a retiree and widow played with truth and grace by Blythe Danner — seeming to have gotten the emotional availability memo. Neither a feel-good bromide nor a cynical comeback thereto, I'll See You in My Dreams seems patiently to be working out an equation which allows getting older on one side of the equal sign and keeping calm on the other. Daily. The Connection: Because in French, they don't need to call it The French Connection. The fact-based tale of cops versus smack smugglers in 1970s Marseille may be familiar from a certain celebrated American film, but this take, made with gusto by director Cédric Jimenez, doesn't seem daunted at all. Even if Jimenez hasn't exactly broken the period-crime-thriller mold, he's built a solid entertainment, with techniques well absorbed from the American movie tradition. Daily. Wild Tales: A cornucopia of comeuppance, this exuberant pulp anthology from Argentine writer-director Damián Szifrón would like to point out how ready and willing humans still are to act like animals. The tales include a perhaps deservedly unlucky assembly of airplane passengers; a dish of revenge best served at a late-night diner; a bribery spiral spinning out of control from a drunken rich kid's hit-and-run; an elaborate road-rage duel that'll be the envy of Tarantino; a demolitionist getting his own blow-up button pushed by parking-enforcement bureaucracy; and one catastrophically tacky wedding. Daily. Live from New York!: By definition, Bao Nguyen's feature-length documentary can't come close to telling the full story of Saturday Night Live, which would require a weeklong miniseries to truly do it justice. But Nguyen's film does deserve credit for not only not shying away from its subject's darker moments, but addressing them head-on in the first act, as the show's history of racism and sexism are discussed by people who experienced it firsthand. Starting June 12. Daily. Far from the Madding Crowd: Tonight's episode of The Dating Game comes to you from 19th-century England, where our bachelorette has just come into possession of some land and multiple options for new suitors: a steadfast shepherd, a volatile soldier, and a middle-aged fellow farmer who once wouldn't give her the time of day but now can't get her out of his mind. Director Thomas Vinterberg's tastefully lush adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel may not be the most innovative literary update, but as a new episode of an old game show, it's a swoon-worthy knockout. Daily. 1 Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, 267-4893, landmarktheatres.com.
Exploratorium. Saturday Cinema: Weekly thematic film screenings presented in the Kanbar Forum by the Exploratorium's Cinema Arts program. Saturdays. Free with museum admission. Pier 15, San Francisco, 528-4444, exploratorium.edu.
The Luggage Store. #QUEERFAIL Festival: Queer Shorts: Clement Hil Goldberg curates a series of short films "from the vault and others new to the planet" on the second day of RADAR Productions' quintessentially provocative #QUEERFAIL Festival. Tue., June 16, 5:30 p.m. $5. radarproductions.org. 1007 Market, San Francisco, 255-5971, luggagestoregallery.org.
Multiple San Francisco Locations. San Francisco Black Film Festival XVII: With dozens of short films and select independent features at five different venues, this year's SFBFF continually shifts its focus between the personal and the political, balancing ongoing tragedies of social injustice with moments of humor and celebration. Some films of special local note include the world premiere of America Is Still the Place, based on S.F. native Charlie Walker's book about turning an environmental accident into a business opportunity (institutionalized racism be damned); the Bay Area Video Coalition's documentary Point of Pride: The People's View of Bayview/Hunters Point; and Zachary Butler's hourlong hip-hop doc Mac Dre: Legend of the Bay, which closes the festival with a free screening at the Boom Boom Room. June 11-14. sfbff.org. SF DocFest: With all due respect to fiction, reality where it's really at, and this year's 14th annual SF DocFest will be dropping plenty of truth-bombs on the Roxie, Brava, Balboa, and Vogue Theaters. Film subjects range from Vietnam war re-enactors, Japanese country singers, Canadian wannabe metal gods, Tibetan expat beauty pageants, and Mexican psychiatric asylums to quasi-satanic churches, undocumented immigrants, avant-garde filmmakers, public access TV goofballs, and much more. Through June 18. sfindie.com. Multiple addresses, San Francisco.
Oddball Films. Scientific Psychedelia: From time-lapsed opium poppies to spacious Martian landscapes, these short films take you on a scientific trip without requiring any special chemicals (other than those needed to develop the film itself). Thu., June 11, 8 p.m. $10. Sex, Death, and Cartoons: Eros and thanatos combine for a night of spooky 'toons and sexy short films. Fri., June 12, 8 p.m. $10. 275 Capp, San Francisco, 558-8112, oddballfilms.blogspot.com.
Opera Plaza Cinemas. About Elly: Reviewable only with heavy spoiler protection, Asghar Farhadi's About Elly is masterfully character-driven, full of narrative switchbacks, reveals within reveals, and electrifying recriminations. Farhadi has a uniformly excellent ensemble cast and a fine sense of dramatic proportion, and while the cultural tension between progressivism and religious tradition seems explicitly Iranian, the human behavior seems precisely universal. Daily. The Tales of Hoffmann: A pinnacle of Technicolor expressionism, this 1951 movie based on an 1881 opera is one of history's strangest, most sumptuous somethings-you-don't-see-every-day. In a series of amorous escapades, a poet encounters an automaton ballerina, a soul-sucking courtesan, and a consumptive opera singer — all transpiring within a lushly appointed stage-arena of fabrics, painted backdrops, and wide watchful eyes — with lots of art-for-art's-sake ecstasies bubbling up through in the lava flow of febrile romanticism. Through June 11. The Apu Trilogy: Even before The Simpsons, the whole world knew the name Apu. That began with an unprecedented portrait of rural Indian boyhood in Satyajit Ray's 1955 debut Pather Panchali (which won Best Director and Best Picture awards at the very first San Francisco International Film Festival). In Aparajito (1956), the enduringly sensitive, observant, and intelligent Apu reaches adolescence and goes away to school. In Apur Sansar (1959), he becomes a father. But any summary is reductive; what makes the films work is the sense they give of accumulating life experience. They've aged well because they were made with complete conviction, and it's hard to understate the value they place on human dignity. June 12-18. Results: Andrew Bujalski's new comedy stars Kevin Corrigan as wealthy sad-sack Danny, who joins a gym run by the very Australian Trevor (Guy Pearce), and is taken on by personal trainer Kat (Cobie Smulders, who continues to be the best), whom Danny starts to take a liking to in his own weird but mostly harmless way. Starting June 12. Daily. Iris: The final film from late, great documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles is this intimate profile of 93-year-old NYC fashion icon (and stunna shades superstar) Iris Apfel. Starting June 12. Daily. 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, 777-3456, landmarktheatres.com.
Presidio Theatre. Love at First Fight: Thomas Cailley's Love at First Fight is a French romantic comedy that's a good thing for a change. Films in the genre tend to ramp up the ooh-la-la factor, with the object of the man's gaze often conforming to the most banal male fantasies, but Cailley resists objectifying. If the strong, survivalism-obsessed female lead remains something of a cipher, it's not because the male protagonist and/or the camera are only interested in her as a shapely piece of meat, but because she has an interior life that the men are not privy to. Starting June 12. Daily. 2340 Chestnut, San Francisco, 776-2388, lntsf.com.
Temescal Arts Center. Shapeshifters Cinema: Free monthly film series featuring experimental image manipulators and ambient sound shamans. Second Sunday of every month, 8 p.m. Free. shapeshifterscinema.com. 511 48th St., Oakland, 510-923-1074, temescalartscenter.org.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. New Filipino Cinema: Though it can probably only be summarized with the disclaimer that it can't easily be summarized, YBCA's fourth annual installment of this special festival reliably collects some of the most dynamic and diverse independent cinema in the world, with topics including (but not limited to) typhoon devastation, the long-lasting fallout from dictatorship, the costliness of dying, and oblique love stories with supernatural twists. Also there are some simply great titles, like Relaks, It's Just Pag-Ibig. June 11-28. $8-$10. 701 Mission, San Francisco, 978-2787, ybca.org.
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